Building Your Messaging Strategy to Build Your Community

Direct communication is the need of the hour. In a recent survey conducted by Ipsos and Facebook across 5000 adults in 5 countries, 57% of people said that they want the option to engage with governments via messaging apps.*

So how can you, as a government organization, respond to this need?

Show your community that you’re listening, by treating every interaction with your constituents as an opportunity to show care and build trust.

The foundation of meaningful conversation is a robust messaging strategy designed to ensure you connect with people where they are already spending their time, build trust by being approachable and empathetic, and are ready to activate and amplify as needed. When creating your messaging strategy, consider your audience, objectives and ability to activate.

Audience

Knowing who your audience is, what Facebook messaging apps they use (such as Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram Direct or a combination) and how they use them is key.

To get to know your audience, you can leverage Page Insights and consider conducting off-platform research:

• Research: To learn more about your audience’s communication habits on messaging, consider conducting qualitative and / or quantitative research to understand how your audience wants to communicate with you on messaging apps. This could involve looking into the type of information they expect to receive, the types of questions / requests they would like to be supported with over messaging and how often they would like to communicate.
• Page / Account Insights: You can also leverage audience insights from your Facebook Page or Instagram profile to see who is already engaging with your Page or profile, as those people are more likely to be open to more direct communication with your organization.

Objectives

Once you’re clear on who your audience is and what they want - it’s time to think about your objectives for this audience. What is the most important thing you want to achieve through direct engagement?

You may want to inform your community about news or updates that are important to their wellbeing, safety or knowledge. Or, you may want to provide support, such as answer questions or discuss issues. You may also want to encourage your audience to take an action or register them for a particular government service.

Activation

Now that you know who your audience is, what they want and what you want them to do, it’s time to consider how you’re going to do it. This includes considering a number of things:

• Key messages

What topics do you want to connect with your community about? What are the main points that you want to communicate in your conversations? Do these vary for different sections of your community? For example, you may want to talk about a new community healthcare program which has different implications for different age groups or people with different needs. This will impact the key messages you want to communicate to different audiences.

• Creative effectiveness

How are you going to bring the conversation to life and engage your community creatively? For example, you could use a combination of static and video assets to engage them, or inject light-hearted humor if appropriate into your copy.

• Resource and management

How much time are you able and willing to dedicate to delivering a messaging experience for your audience? With automation, this may not be as time consuming as you think.

• Options for activation

Is your messaging going to be manual, automated or a combination of both? Messaging with Facebook can be manual (people-powered), automated or a combination of both. For example, for a more holistic outreach, governments may decide to use a combination of a people-powered and automated approach. This is particularly common when using WhatsApp. For example, a Ministry of Health may use the WhatsApp Business API to create a virtual assistant to assess COVID-19 symptoms, connecting anyone who thinks they are sick to a doctor who would do a video call with the person using the WhatsApp Business App**.

Read more about automation in messaging in this blog.

100B messages are exchanged across Facebook products each day.***

We offer messaging that spans three platforms: Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Instagram Direct that can be used individually or in an integrated way.

Incorporating messaging into your digital communications strategy can help you keep people actively and accurately informed so they feel empowered and cared for. Our messaging platforms allow government organizations to engage at scale through automation, creating efficiency for you and convenience for your communities.

Download guide: Messaging for Government Organizations

Notes:

*Source: Connecting with Government: Community Insights by Ipsos, (Facebook-commissioned study of adults based in the US, UK, Italy, Brazil and India), January 2021

**Even though the WhatsApp solutions include the term “business”, they are used by governments to scale their communications quickly and effectively.

***Source: Facebook data, Global, October 2018